My Link»

Helvetica is one of fonts or typefaces and is also a documentary movie about typeface 'Helvetica'

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which celebrated its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type.

Helvetica encompasses the worlds of design, advertising, psychology, and communication, and invites us to take a second look at the thousands of words we see every day. The film was shot in high-definition on location in the United States, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, France and Belgium.

Helvetica had its World Premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March 2007. The film subsequently toured film festivals, special events, and art house cinemas worldwide, playing in over 300 cities in 40 countries. It received its television premiere on BBC1 in November 2007, and will be broadcast on PBS as part of the Emmy award-winning series Independent Lens in fall 2008. The film was nominated for a 2008 Independent Spirit Award in the "Truer Than Fiction" category, and was shortlisted for the Design Museum London's "Designs of the Year" Award. An excerpt of the film was included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

About typeface

Helvetica was developed by Max Miedinger with Edüard Hoffmann in 1957 for the Haas Type Foundry in Münchenstein, Switzerland. In the late 1950s, the European design world saw a revival of older sans-serif typefaces such as the German face Akzidenz Grotesk. Haas' director Hoffmann commissioned Miedinger, a former employee and freelance designer, to draw an updated sans-serif typeface to add to their line. The result was called Neue Haas Grotesk, but its name was later changed to Helvetica, derived from Helvetia, the Latin name for Switzerland, when Haas' German parent companies Stempel and Linotype began marketing the font internationally in 1961.

Introduced amidst a wave of popularity of Swiss design, and fueled by advertising agencies selling this new design style to their clients, Helvetica quickly appeared in corporate logos, signage for transportation systems, fine art prints, and myriad other uses worldwide. Inclusion of the font in home computer systems such as the Apple Macintosh in 1984 only further cemented its ubiquity.

Some key comments in the movie 'Helvetica'

Typefaces express the mood and the atmosphere.
Helvetica is ubiquitous, we can see it everywhere.
The designer has enormous reponsibilities.
CI of American Airline has not been changed for 40 years.
Don't use more than 3 typefaces.
Helvetica is the modern type and has a great legibility.
After world war II, there is a idealism, Design was the part of that and should be more democratic, social reponsibility
Helvetica emerged in 1957 and there was the need for rationality, where can be applied to all kinds of information
Design should be clear, real, and straightforward.
Helvetica is all about interrelationship of the negative shapes, the figure-ground relationship, shapes between characters and within characters.
Helvetica are letters that live in powerful matrix of surrounding spaces.
Helvetia is the Latin name of Switzerland
Neutral, effective, accessible, transparent, accountable are features of Helvetica.